


Aftermath

by biseasiren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, PTSD, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 15:13:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5379893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biseasiren/pseuds/biseasiren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He pulls out his hair, his eyelashes, the tags of skin at the sides of his nails, until he is bleeding, bleeding like all the first times, all the moments in his past life when he had lain still and hoped for the world to collapse on itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying to get back into writing, so here's my first attempt in a long time! Leave me a comment about what you thought of it - I'm looking for some reassurance that I can still write!

Even though the War has been over for five years and the Dark Lord has been in the ground for six, Draco still sometimes feels like it is still raging outside, just beyond his line of sight, danger lurking around the corner to suck him back into its grip.

It takes one small thing, one sound or smell or spell, and he is on the floor, screaming himself hoarse from the Cruciatus curse, shedding silent tears as Greyback runs a filthy nail down the small of his naked back, pointing his wand at Dumbledore’s old heart as his own thumped, so red and alive, in his chest. It takes a look from a stranger to drag him back to the dungeon under Malfoy Manor, Ollivander spitting at his feet and throwing his plate of food against the wall, the smell of urine and sweat filling his nostrils as he gasps, mind and body reeling, nails digging bloody half-moons into his palms. Stuck in a nightmare, he drags his body through the motions until he can be alone to cry and shake and rip at his hair, racing through flashbacks like he once raced through potions textbooks. He pulls out his hair, his eyelashes, the tags of skin at the sides of his nails, until he is bleeding, bleeding like all the first times, all the moments in his past life when he had lain still and hoped for the world to collapse on itself.

It takes one small thing. The War may be over outside, but inside Draco, it never ended.

*

Harry Potter’s name screams from every newspaper, every person’s lips in the years following the Dark Lord’s defeat. “Harry Potter Spearheads Campaign to Round Up Rouge Death Eaters”; “Potter Unveils Plot to Attack the Ministry of Magic, 50 Ex-Death Eaters Arrested”; “you know, my second cousin was at the Battle of Hogwarts and reckons Potter killed You Know Who with an Expelliarmus spell, I told him that he was off his rocker, he obviously had to have used the killing curse…” His name bounces off the walls, reverberates in bars, echoes in the streets. In absence of the man himself, without a body to worship, people grasp his name to their hearts. 

Once the War is officially over and the aftermath is dealt with, Harry locks himself away from requests for interviews and photo shoots. A short balding man who claims to be a souvenir dealer offers him 500 Galleons for his hair and 10% royalties on every lock sold in his shop. He turns him down and wonders dully why he doesn’t feel like laughing along with Ron when he tells him the story. He has to ask Hermione for her Extension spell to make a desk that can hold all of his fan mail, letters that he doesn’t read but tosses unopened into it. He hasn’t bought a new owl since Hedwig died, but he doesn’t send out mail anyway. He sets her cage on top of the desk and polishes the metal, leaves bird seed and water in the trays for the owls that drop off the newspaper. Sometimes he sits opposite it, imagines her intelligent face and silky feathers, and rubs his finger that she used to nip when she wanted treats.

When he isn’t watching Hedwig’s cage, Harry sits on a chair in his bedroom and stares at the wall. His body sags into the chair and he feels a weight on his head, pressing him down into the carpet. He feels too large for his skin. So he sits and tries to breathe quietly, to fade into the wallpaper, to disappear completely into the pattern.

*

Draco realises, too late and yet too soon, that his wand will not do what he asks it to do. The first time he sent a stinging hex down at his Dark Mark, he felt the flash of pain followed by the slow blossoming of an ache through his arm and shoulder, but the next time he tries it, his wand refuses to function. He sends sparks down at the tattoo, faded now, but still ashy and ugly against his skin. He sends stinging hexes, curses meant to bruise, cut, slice, charms to create fire to burn away flesh, but his wand remains stubborn. He thinks that he has lost his magic, but realises that it is not the magic that is the problem; it is the recipient.

So he resorts to Muggle methods, using a blunt knife that he found at the bottom of a drawer, digging with the dull edge into his skin, trying to peel away the pigment, rip at the raised edge as if he could lift it off with a clean motion, flip it like an egg and slot it back into place.

Sometimes he feels like he is going to drown in blood. He wishes that he would.

*

Harry ends up being forcibly taken to St Mungo’s, Hermione and Ron lifting him with their wands and disapparating him to the ward. He lies as still as he can, trying to breathe as quietly and as slowly as possible, trying as hard as he can to disappear, but his magic is worthless these days even with a wand and his body remains solid. Hedwig flutters around him, her talons just missing him as she grasps for his arm to pull him from the ward, a locket swinging from her neck, Dobby’s eyes as he took his last breath looking down at him. Harry clenches his eyes shut against the pain raking across his forehead, his breathing becoming increasingly hard to regulate, dampness under his arms spreading to between his legs. 

As two Healers start to lower him onto a bed, a commotion erupts in the corner of the reception. A deadly silence falls and a low moaning cuts through the reception, and Harry is reminded of the Battle, when Ginny crouched over a young girl whispering over and over for her mother. 

He opens his eyes, and when he sees the blonde hair and the blood he is off the bed, his body breaking the magical bonds and his heart racing through his throat. History cannot repeat itself, a singsong in his head as he pulls Draco Malfoy’s arm to his chest while Healers scatter around like ants, blood pouring out of the wound and soaking them both. 

Hermione starts to sob as the silence breaks and he wonders how she does it, how anyone can cry in a world like this, how anyone can live outside and walk amongst the dead while feeling your heart beating and the smell of blood in your nostrils, metallic and sickly sweet, how anyone can stay alive, how no one can see that the world is broken and crumbling.

*

Draco wiggles his fingers experimentally and the Mediwitch smiles at the action. She pushes a potion towards him while checking his vitals with her wand, and he sips at it slowly, using his left hand clumsily. The Mediwitch finishes her checks and sits back down on the chair beside his bed.

“How are you feeling, Mr Malfoy?” she asks. 

Draco thinks about the new blood in his veins, marks from emergency medical spells still visible on his skin, the uncertainty with which he grips the potion cup with his tingling fingers. He thinks of the Dark Mark, invisible for the moment underneath the magical traces, but soon to reappear. He has heard that it will fade in time to a scar. A scar like Harry Potter’s. A visible scar, one that will cover his shame but announce another. 

He thinks of lying in his own blood, alone and dying, his arm stretched uselessly out from his body and the edges of the world softening. He thinks of the feeling of blood streaming out of his veins like a waterfall, the way that his hand seemed to reach for his wand without his volition, and the compressing sensation of disapparating. He remembers lying in the middle of a crowded reception room, his eyes starting to close, wondering where he is and wishing that it would all just go away. His wand hand remembers, his magic remembers. 

And most of all he remembers a pair of bright green eyes hovering over him, framed by dark glasses and a shock of untidy black hair. The edges of this memory are blurred, frayed, but he knows that it is real. 

_How are you feeling, Mr Malfoy?_

“I’m alive” he replies. “That’s enough”. 

*

When Harry is finally ready to leave, four months, five days, and seven hours after he first arrived, he gathers up his things, the accumulation of a long term stay in the ward, and prepares to face the outside world again. 

The others in the ward barely stir as he pushes open the double doors, but he is used to this. After the War, St Mungo’s had been forced to open a new ward, just for people recovering from the mental scars that living under the rule of Voldemort had left. Some of them scream at night, others scream during the day, so there are silencing charms around their beds, permanent spells that only the ward Healers know how to break. It’s hard to make connections with people when there are shimmering layers of magic cloistering you in silence. Recovery is slow. Some never manage it. 

Ron is running late, but he doesn’t mind – he has a place to be first.

*

When Harry Potter appears at the doorway, Draco’s heart seems to skip a beat, and an ache in his chest that he never realised was there gives one last pulse before it finally fades away. 

There isn’t much that makes him feel like that anymore, but Potter being one of them isn’t the strangest thing to happen in his messed up life. 

The world doesn’t seem like much, but when he thinks of the scars on his arm and the beating of his heart that is still so alive that it can skip a beat and keep flowing, keep thumping, sometimes he thinks that there might be a glimmer of hope in it after all.


End file.
